Cases are always named as "plaintiff v defendant". Apple is suing Samsung but Samsung is also counter-suing Apple. Samsung was not being petty in complaining about not getting "top billing", they were complaining (and rightly so) that both the suit and counter-suit be identified.

In Canada, low income individuals get a partial federal sales tax rebate each year when they file their taxes, however we have both income and consumption (sales) tax.

The big problem with consumption tax is not that it isn't progressive, but that it encourages the creation of an underground economy where people offer goods and services without collecting (or submitting) the consumption tax. It happens all the time in Canada where the federal sales tax is only 5%. Any system that had to replace both personal income and corporate taxes would be more like 25% to 30% which is a huge incentive for people to cheat the system.

Jon Stewart had an interesting interview with Marco Rubio on the Daily Show last week. Basically Rubio has a more balanced view of immigration than most of his fellow Republicans because he is the son of immigrants, just as Dick Cheney has a more balanced view of same-sex marriage because his daughter is gay. Unfortunately, those kinds of social connections which allow people on one side of a debate to see the other side more objectively are rare and I don't see how you could create them if they don't already exist.

Actually, if the school provides the brushes and paints and "studio space" for the little artists, couldn't an argument be made that this is a work-for-hire in which case the school legitimately holds the copyright anyway? Or does money have to be exchanged for a work-for-hire situation to exist?

I suspect the reason patent terms haven't been extended while copyright terms have is simply that they have a shorter useful lifespan. A painting or novel or song from 100 years ago is still valuable today in it's original form. A patent from 17 years ago (that's 1994, think MS-DOS and VCRs) is useless in it's original form (though it might become the basis for some new technology to build upon once the patent expires).

Exactly. This would be like a music publisher saying to Apple, "You can sell our CDs in your Apple stores but you can't sell them on iTunes." B&N knows it's brick & mortar stores are just a stop gap measure until everything is electronic. Frankly, I don't blame B&N for reacting like this and I think DC will eventually regret giving Amazon so much power over them by doing an exclusive deal.

Law firms that do pro bono lawsuits should ALWAYS have to pay the legal fees of the defendants if they lose. That would reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits pretty damn quick, and hopefully reduce the number of innocent people/businesses who settle out of court because they can't afford to defend themselves.